I honestly think “find the elixir of immortality within a couple of generations” is not what I’d call a pragmatic plan to solve this. Personally I don’t think having 2 or 3 children would necessarily be such a curse in a different kind of world. A few obvious changes that I think would help towards that:
short of immortality, any extension of youth helps. Part of the problem here is that by the time we feel like we’ve got our shit sorted out, we’re almost too old to have children;
artificial wombs. Smooth out the risks of pregnancy and eliminate the biological divide between men and women in this deal;
houses, houses, houses. Children need space. People want to give their children space. “Shit sorted out” almost always includes buying a house. Build more fucking houses. Have priorities;
a less neurotic culture around children. We kept raising the bar about what it means to be a good parent and then we’re surprised so many people see it as way too stressful and hard for them. Make more independence to children not only legal when it’s not, but normal. That has the double benefit of being known to actually really help the psychological growth of those children and of leaving more free time to the parents. Are there risks? Yes, but all life comes with risks, they can be mitigated in other ways, and these risks I feel are likely perceived way more than statistics would justify;
get our priorities straight about work. Look, yes, productivity is important and all. But effectively our society tells people that if you want to work towards developing a new sports betting app, that’s £80,000 per year; if you want to work towards making sure the city doesn’t fall to dysentery by keeping it clean, that’s £30,000 per year; and if you want to have and raise the next generation, a £100,000 lump sum for 18 years of work would be the wildest thing we can think of. Obviously this is not even on the same scale. Pay a straight up parental sabbatical for people at peak reproductive age (say, 25-35), see what happens. A time to do mostly parenting and nothing else, maybe some easy part time work on the side. Does that mean losing some peak productive years? Yes, of course. Would that productivity be best used for society making sure all the middle management is properly middle managed in the umpteenth marketing company?
The problem is honestly that this issue is so polarized. So doing anything about it is now associated with being with the religious right wing (or worse, the racist right wing specifically worried about white people being out-bred), which then means that the actually more liberal and rational parts of the centre-right, centre and left abhor touching it and have to pretend there’s no problem. The Amish thing is a self-fulfilling prophecy. I think the way forward in this sense would be to spin it: not “you must have children for the sake of humanity’s future!”, but “our inability to allow people to have children is actually ruining their potential happiness”. There’s already some efforts in that direction but they feel quite half assed, and I think the left in particular focuses too much on the economic aspects only without seeing that there’s a bit more at play.
I honestly think “find the elixir of immortality within a couple of generations” is not what I’d call a pragmatic plan to solve this. Personally I don’t think having 2 or 3 children would necessarily be such a curse in a different kind of world. A few obvious changes that I think would help towards that:
short of immortality, any extension of youth helps. Part of the problem here is that by the time we feel like we’ve got our shit sorted out, we’re almost too old to have children;
artificial wombs. Smooth out the risks of pregnancy and eliminate the biological divide between men and women in this deal;
houses, houses, houses. Children need space. People want to give their children space. “Shit sorted out” almost always includes buying a house. Build more fucking houses. Have priorities;
a less neurotic culture around children. We kept raising the bar about what it means to be a good parent and then we’re surprised so many people see it as way too stressful and hard for them. Make more independence to children not only legal when it’s not, but normal. That has the double benefit of being known to actually really help the psychological growth of those children and of leaving more free time to the parents. Are there risks? Yes, but all life comes with risks, they can be mitigated in other ways, and these risks I feel are likely perceived way more than statistics would justify;
get our priorities straight about work. Look, yes, productivity is important and all. But effectively our society tells people that if you want to work towards developing a new sports betting app, that’s £80,000 per year; if you want to work towards making sure the city doesn’t fall to dysentery by keeping it clean, that’s £30,000 per year; and if you want to have and raise the next generation, a £100,000 lump sum for 18 years of work would be the wildest thing we can think of. Obviously this is not even on the same scale. Pay a straight up parental sabbatical for people at peak reproductive age (say, 25-35), see what happens. A time to do mostly parenting and nothing else, maybe some easy part time work on the side. Does that mean losing some peak productive years? Yes, of course. Would that productivity be best used for society making sure all the middle management is properly middle managed in the umpteenth marketing company?
The problem is honestly that this issue is so polarized. So doing anything about it is now associated with being with the religious right wing (or worse, the racist right wing specifically worried about white people being out-bred), which then means that the actually more liberal and rational parts of the centre-right, centre and left abhor touching it and have to pretend there’s no problem. The Amish thing is a self-fulfilling prophecy. I think the way forward in this sense would be to spin it: not “you must have children for the sake of humanity’s future!”, but “our inability to allow people to have children is actually ruining their potential happiness”. There’s already some efforts in that direction but they feel quite half assed, and I think the left in particular focuses too much on the economic aspects only without seeing that there’s a bit more at play.